Slashdot Mirror
Gates Foundation Plans To Invest $10B Into Vaccines
Endloser writes "Bill Gates is going to invest $10 billion to provide vaccines to people worldwide. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation believes that vaccines are the way to a better future for the world. So they have decided to make 'the largest pledge ever made by a charitable foundation to a single cause.' This 10-year, 10 billion dollar project is expected to save 8.7 million lives."
Melinda Gates spoke to Charlie Rose about this. She says that the foundation analyzed this question carefully, and came to the conclusion that it is just far far easier for a population to lift itself up out of a cycle of poverty if it doesn't have to deal with disease (both personal and of family members) all the time. It's hard to get an education when you're taking care of a household of polio victims.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
This is really incredible. We're going to see a malaria and/or HIV vaccine in our lifetimes partly thanks to people like Gates.
I guess the larger issue is whether these poorer countries can handle having a much lower mortality rate. Probably. I imagine this initiative ties in with others and that these societies probably need more young people than old.
Birth control doesn't mean no kids, it means planned kids.
Then there is also the issue that Yemen is having, 50% of their population is under the age of 18.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
You clearly come from a country with low infant mortality where putting your eggs in one basket still yields a high probability of having family around you in your old age. I wouldn't be surprised if the higher the infant mortality rate in an area, the greater the number of children the people are likely to have. It's called redundancy. Of course there are other factors such as social security for elderly people (or lack thereof) that could drive peoples desire for offspring.
Global Problems of Population Growth with Professor Robert Wyman a Yale uni online course speaks extensively to overpopulation. In the context of this thread the overriding message would be that women need most of all to be given control of their own bodies, especially in terms of birth control. In countries where poor education and overpopulation are prevalent problems most women will say they want as many children as possible, or, that children are a gift from God and therefore every child a gift; but, the same women when questioned in a different context wanted fewer children. The much joked about 2.1 children per couple is close to the replacement level for most populations. Giving women control over their own reproduction cycle will bring down population and likely along with it poverty, under nourishment, disease and lack of education. The lectures are very entertaining.
ideopath @ play
Saving lives is always a good thing, don't get me wrong. But I often wonder if 10 billion spent on infrastructure like irrigation, factories, schools, etc.. would save more lives in the long run for impoverished countries.
On one hand, if every 3rd person was dropping dead of an easily preventable disease in a country, it certainly wouldn't be a very stable society. Say you built schools, irrigation, factories, and then every other worker involved in them was sick. It just wouldn't work. The farms wouldn't produce, The factories would shut down, people would fear going to school and contracting something, etc..
On the other hand, education and birth control, infrastructure, etc.. will eventually allow a people to pull themselves up. If ever day is a constant struggle for survival, thinking long term (like building a road) is low on their priority list, and it just won't ever get done.
Perhaps there needs to be some regulation in place that dictates that aid must be spent equally between pure life saving and development of the interior? In the last decade, there have been several good books talking about why pure food aid in Africa, for instance, isn't very beneficial. It is only after seeing the results of multiple decades of food aid, that people are beginning to question pure life saving aid.
Morally, it is hard to say "some must die so that less may die next year", but it certainly doesn't seem like situations in impoverished countries are getting any better with the current model of aid.
No, the Hispanic immigrants seem to be breeding enough to keep this problem at bay in the US.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
The "way to a better future for the world" is birth control and education. Don't want to sound cold, but the places with the most human suffering are also the areas with the worst overpopulation vs. the least natural resources.
Dr. Hans Rosling debunked that theory a while ago. I'd highly recommend watching this (10 minutes) video. He uses his gapminder.org tool and backs the points he makes with real data.
The tl;dr version of the video:
"My students, they tell me population growth destroys the environment, so poor children may as well die ... Now, the problem with that thinking, with this thought, is not that it's not moral, it's that it's wrong. And I will show you why..."
If you have more free time on your hand after watching this, I'd highly recommend looking up his TED talks, specially the one titled "Let my dataset change your mindset".
If you can't mod them join them.
I think $1149 worth of primary care medicine or even plain old sanitation in underdeveloped places could save a hell of a lot more lives than that.
Yes, but you can't actually provide medicine or sanitation to underdeveloped places. Corruption would mean the medicine would go back on the international market to richer people looking for a deal, and the sanitation building would have to pay off all kinds of government officials to get permits, etc. Then it would have to be maintained in that environment.
Countries aren't poor because they are poor, they are poor because they have bad institutions and governments.
On the other hand, a group of foreigners can fly into a country and vaccinate a bunch of people and fly out.
The human population is only exploding in places where a lot of children die before they can reproduce.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This foundation is not just shooting the shit on the internet to decide what to do. They have Mr. Gates' and Mr. Buffett's personal fortunes going into analyzing how to do the most good in the world.
Having lots of money and spending it on the right things is not the same. The Gates Foundation is very focussed on health and especially diseases, it has made very few investments in other areas.
I doubt that they have done the analysis that you allude to. I really do. They wouldn't be the first. Especially the west is often a victim of hubris. Look how much money we've poured into Afghanistan and Iraq and what the result is so far. Burning it would probably have had a better net effect, at least it would've heated a number of homes.
I'm afraid the same phenomenon is at work here. The Gates Foundation "knows" that disease is the major problem, just like our warlords "know" that forcing democracy on a foreign population will magically fix all their problems.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think you underestimate the effectiveness of raping someone who has been given abstinence classes.
... Africans often work 60hours+ weeks at ~6cents an hour. Their children are often dying or at work with them. With this money they can survive week to week without saving any money for the future.
Also I'm amused that you think the ideas and problems of north americans transfer so easily to africa. Unless you are being sarcastic
Your view shows how ignorant you are of a 3rd world situation. To the point of being offensive. Screaming brat haha, I think they worry more about hearing the screams of their family being slaughtered in yet another ethnic cleansing.
If his $10 billion buys way less thanks to TRIPS and/or ACTA.
A few other good causes : Invest money into the pharmaceutical industries in countries like Brazil that have shown their willingness to break intellectual property treaties when people's lives are at stake. A cheaper and more charitable approach might be endowing biotechnology professorships with this stated goal at the best medical schools in these countries. A more political approach might be lobbying the European Union to pass legislation saying that generic drug manufacturers may violate patents for exported drugs to third world countries when the number of lives saved would be significant. Just oppose ACTA and/or try to roll back TRIPS --- ACTA will kill people.
I suggest that you read about the history of the fight against AIDS. If Brazil had not stood up against the U.S. and said "We will make anti-retrovirals ourselves if you don't sell them at a fraction of the cost", then incredible numbers of Brazilians would have died, and millions more would have died in other developing countries that currently benefit from Brazil's hard nose negotiation.
p.s. I do think all the people criticizing how he earned his money are being disingenuous. Gate's only sins are : robbing other rich people of their smart employees, selling poor quality software, and lobbying for bad copyright laws. Do you even want to think about what Exxon does with your gas money? Federal government with your tax money? (Iraq) etc. You don't see Dick Channey out running charity organizations.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The children are "had" because they support you when you are old. Your pill would help absolutely nothing, unless it is forcefully given to the men.
Per Melinda Gates' own words, they HAVE done the analysis I mentioned.
Per my words with a limited focus.
I'm sure the first foreign aid had done an analysis, too. Feeding that people so they don't starve certainly turned out to be the top priority. They just didn't realize that more survivors == more ressource usage == worsening of the food and water situation.
Call me ignorant in 10 years, when the Gates Foundation has saved 8 million lives, thus condemning 20 million people (their children) to suffering and early death.
You can't interfere with exponential processes (population growth) unless you're able to raise your investment exponentially.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Birth rates should be significantly slowing down when medicine and food supply are good enough to assure that most children reach adulthood.
They should and they do in some countries and/or cultures. In others, the population count suddenly explodes, with 8-10% increase per year, sustained for decades. The health and food supply then drops of course as infrastructure and resources are stretched above and beyond. But the population level usually remains stable after that, until another WHO or other rich benefactor throws in another round of vaccination, food supply, affordable emergency housing.
Example:
Gaza Strip, Westbank, Palestine: during events that Palestinians love to call "2nd Holocaust", the population increased from 500.000 to 7.000.000 in less than 40 years. The population still increases by 8% each year with no slowing in sight, as Arab neighbors and of course the ever-benevolent EU continue to give millions in aid, food and medicine. They still call it Holocaust, though.
___
Food, medicine, wealth and the chance of children to reach adulthood are only some factors in the decision or non-decision to have offspring. Of equal or higher importance are
- access to contraceptives
- the willingness to use them
- the cultural status of the number of children among adults,
- prevalence of adultery,
- risk-seeking behavior
- men's and women's rights in relation to each other
- religious affiliation
- strength of religious beliefs
While shortages of food, medicine, housing and access to contraceptives "simply" need an amount of X million Dollars or Euros to improve, all the other factors are inherent in each and every culture. They can change and they can be changed, but it will take decades and money alone will not help much there.
Food, medicine and housing shortage will reduce the population growth only indirectly, but with a vengeance: by children dying en masse. Foreign aid, oil booms etc. will not alleviate much when the Average Joe thinks that the a lot of children are a symbol of wealth, if all the priests or imams or holy books tell them that having more children is the will of god or all men and women willfully or habitually engage in risk-seeking sex, or sex while under the influence or anything like that.
When all of Joes friends awe at his virile manliness for fathering 10 kids, and Joe's wife (and everyone else's) is subdued, veiled, imprisoned by other Joes, the mob rule in Joe's country or Joe's favorite religion's Gestapo - then no amount of wealth or poverty is going to stop him using his god-given tools of manliness without the god-forbidden sins of rubbery latex.